Originally published in Dobrila, Peter T. and Kostic, Aleksandra (eds.),Eduardo Kac: Telepresence, Biotelematics, and Transgenic Art (Maribor,Slovenia: Kibla, 2000), pp. 59-64.

FROM/TO BODY TO/FROM ROBOT

Machiko Kusahara

When Eduardo Kac showed his piece "Teleporting an Unkown State"at Siggraph 96, the public might have wondered how one could transfer sunlightvia the Internet. A young plant was in total darkness in the Siggraph ArtGallery. If it did not receive enough light it would die.

In this project any participant from all over the world could capturethe "photons" using one's own web camera and "send the photons"via Internet. The signals were transferred immediately to the computerat the exhibition site thus giving power to a projector hanging above theyoung plant. It was only the participants' collaborative will that keptthe plant alive and growing. This plant grew from a seed without knowingthe outer world and real sunlight.

"Teleporting an Unknown State" can be compared to Ken Goldberg's"Telegarden" in the sense that it involved a real plant, andthat visitors from the network shared the responsibility in taking careof it. However, there is something very different in "Teleportingan Unknown State". It is an element that can be associated with thelatter part of the title, "Unknown State". While non-materialelements such as photons and the network are the medium or vehicle forsuch physical phenomenon as people sending enough light to a plant, weobserve a strong desire for committment toward physical entity and theinvolvement of one's own body.

It might be deeply related to the fact that Kac was born and grew upin Brazil and then moved to US. Certain similarity can be observed withStelarc who was born in Australia and lived in Japan for a while beforehe started using eletronic technology in his performances. Confrontationwith different cultures inevitably brings a concern toward one's identityincluding the role of physical body. Also, artists such as Kac or Stelarcwould say that they do not fully believe in the Utopia of cyberspace. Inappreciating Kac's works, we gain a renewed sense of connection betweenthe real and physical world and our own bodies, plants and animals.

Looking from the point of view of telerobotics, no mechanical or kineticoutput was realized by participants via the Net in "Teleporting anUnknown State". Yet, the nature of physical (in this case optic) interactionit involves and the clever way to transmit such physical interaction overthe Net can be regarded as another possibility in telerobotic art. However,among projects by Kac who is known as "telepresence artist",works such as "Ornitorrinco" and "Rara Avis" are moredirectly related to the notion of telerobotics.

The "Ornitorrinco" project started in 1989 and was developedwith Ed Bennett. It was shown in many different configurations until 1996.In this project, participants could move around remotely on the body ofa small robot using a live video conferencing connection. "Ornitorrincoin Eden" took place in 1994, and was, together with Goldberg's "MercuryProject" (1994), the first telerobotic artwork on the Internet. Themain issue in the "Ornitorrinco" project was the participants'experience and the process itself in real time over real space. The robotreacted to each input from participants rather than being programmed forcertain goal or action, realizing "democracy" in the multi-userenvironment, according to Kac. Again, such awareness of democracy and realtime/space shows Kac's basic attitude toward technology, interactive art,and society.

In "Rara Avis" (1996), a gallery visitor walks into a triangularroom and finds a large aviary in front of her. There is a group of monochromebirds in the cage and a colorful large telerobot macaw. There is a VR headseton the pedestal. When the visitor wears the headset, she discovers thatshe is seeing through the eyes of the electronic macaw. The visitor thenrecognizes herself on the Head-Mounted Display (HMD) screen through therobot-bird's eyes, seen from inside the cage. As the viewer moves her headthe same movement takes place with the macaw's head thus causing a changeof viewpoint on the HMD.

Here, the identity of the viewer and its position is trapped in an endlessloop involving inside and outside, freedom and captivity, seeing and beingseen, to manipulate and to be manipulated. The front of the cage separatesthe free space that opens to the outer world (remember, the room is triangular)from the captured state inside the cage that leads to a narrow end. Theconfiguration of the space is metaphorical both in psychological and socialaspect. From an epistemological point of view, telerobotic technology placesthe viewer both inside and outside the cage. It is said that we receiveapproximately 90% of the information we get from outside through our visualsystem. And our cognition is formed based on the input we get. Then, theconsciousness of the viewer, in this case, should be floating in the cage,while her body remains outside the cage.

The work brings up questions about the reality of our life through contradictions,as is shown in the contrast between monochrome real birds and the colorfulartificial (robot) bird in the cage. In our daily life we take it for grantedthat we live in a single, real world, with a single body and conscisouness-- but is our condition really that secure?

With the advent of the Internet, living virtually in another community(or another space) is becoming an ordinary aspect of life. Having another'self' in another world as an avatar is also possible. But then, wheredo we live -- where are our bodies? Is the reality of life attached tothe space one belongs with the physical body, or to the space one's consciousnessbelong to? Or do we belong to different spaces at the same time in a loopof switching realities? With his life belonging to different cultures inthe real world, Kac visualizes the problems we will face in the near futurewith the layered metaphors in his work. Rara Avis is a work that can reallybe read in multidimensional ways.

Further expanding his previous telepresence work, in 1999 Kac realizeda new telerobotic piece, entitled "Uirapuru". The piece was shownat the InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo, and won a major awardat its Biennale. Roy Ascott, who was a member of the jury, commented asfollows: "Eduardo Kac eschews consolidation in favour of a kind ofrisk-taking hybridization, irreverently mixing not only communicationsmedia but modalities of myth, metaphor and representation. It is a riskthat pays off poetically, providing us with a kind of Roussel/Rousseauworld, in which pockets of cyberspace punctuate an almost mall-like plasticreality. Here the pingbirds sing the song of the Internet, the teleroboticblimp rises over a forest of fake vegetation, awakening us to the dawnof a new world, a multi-user universe, of VRML, streaming video and telepresence.In this jungle of communications complexity, the duality of being is celebratedwith a lighthearted and brilliantly orchestrated joy." [1]

It was a breathtaking sight that a visitor encountered at ICC, as oneentered Kac's space on the fifth floor of the Tokyo Opera City Building,in Shinjuku, the heart of the business district in central Tokyo. An enormousfish, which was a radio controlled blimp in tropical colors, floated inthe sky above the canopy of palm trees and other tropical vegetation inhabitedby a few tropical artificial birds. The trees looked quite realistic, buta closer look revealed they were artificial as well. There were two windingpaths in the forest which led to a bench. The visitor was invited to stopand rest. The physical world in the gallery was simulated in the VRML worldwhich one could see on one of the flat screens at the rim of the artificalrain forest. Visitors experienced seamless interactivity both in real spaceand virtual space on the Net, forming their own narratives as they negotiatedthe multiple layers of agency enabled by "Uirapuru".

Kac explained the piece as follows:

"The word "Uirapuru" is the name of both an actual Amazonianbird and a mythical creature. In the rain forest the bird Uirapuru singsonce a year, when it builds its nest; even then, only from five to tenminutes early in the morning. According to the legend, Uirapuru's songis so beautiful that all other birds stop singing to listen to it. Bothin legend and reality Uirapuru is a symbol of rarefied beauty. (...) Myversion of the legend presents Uirapuru as a flying fish and reinventsUirapuru's dual status as a real animal and a mythical creature throughan experience that is at once local and remote, virtual and physical. Uirapuru'sown spirit is hosted by a virtual fish, who flies and interacts onlinein virtual space with other virtual fish. (...) The telerobotic fish hoversabove a forest populated by colorful pingbirds. Pingbirds are teleroboticbirds that send ping commands to servers geographically located in theAmazon region (where the rainforest is located). The pingbirds sing thesongs of real Amazonian birds according to the rhythm of global networktraffic. In "Uirapuru" greater Internet traffic results in thetelerobotic birds singing more often." [2]

As I sat down on the bench, watching the whimsical fish hovering peacefullyabove the forest canopy while listening to the "pingbirds" sing,the strange feeling I already had since I had entered the space grew stronger.The strange feeling was about the "physical reality" of the space.The artistic/artificial walk-in diorama of the Amazonian rain forest isthe multiple layered interface between the real, physical world, and thevirtual world. We believe the Amazon rain forest is natural. We believewe live in a real, physical world. But the physical world in the gallery,the rain forest, is already totally artificial. The bird which sings thespirit of the rain forest in the Amazonian myth has turned into a plasticfish, floating in the air.

But that's not all. Everything in the gallery, the physical space, seemsto have a double meaning or a double state. The two worlds interact withone another via both physical and digital interfaces. Uirapuru, which isa bird in reality and in legend, is represented as a fish, which usuallylives in a different world. Birds in this physical space represent theinformation flow on the Internet with digitally recorded songs of the realAmazonian birds. In the gallery we can manipulate the blimp, which observesus from above and broadcasts what it sees. The blimp resists complete control,as it is not possible to make it stop in mid air with absolute precision.At the same time the blimp is being observed, under constant surveillance.Here again, like in Rara Avis, we find ourselves within an endless loopof contradicting states, to see and to be seen. Our consciousness seemsto hover above the edge of physical space and its counterpart in virtualreality. Artificial Reality, was the term we used before the phrase VirtualReality became popular. Maybe the term should come back. In "Uirapuru"Kac offers a mythical world in an intentionally lighthearted way. In thisworld, experience oscillates between being present and being telepresent,between being oneself and being something else. In this work Kac showsthat real and virtual constitute each other and that their boundaries areno longer firm or evident.

NOTES

1. Ascott, Roy. "Judge's Review", in ICC Biennale '99; Interaction.(eds.) Komatsuzaki, Takuo. Kawai, Haruko. (Tokyo: InterCommunication Center,1999), p. 55.

2. Kac, E. "Uirapuru", published by the InterCommunicationCenter as a gallery leaflet and distributed during the Biennial (1999).Also published online at: http://www.ekac.org/uirapuru.html.

Originally published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Volume 7, Number10, no page numbers. Uploaded December 2, 1999.

Machiko Kusahara is a Tokyo-based electronic art critic and curator.She is committee member of several organizations, including: InterCommunicationCenter (ICC), Tokyo; Ars Electronica Interactive Category Jury (1987-89);Japanese Ministry of Culture's Media Art Festival (planning committee andjury); UNESCO Web Prize jury (1988-89); Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography(collection committee). She teaches at the Kobe University. Her writingson electronic art have appeared in many books, journals, and magazinesworldwide.

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